For many years the process of taking material and making draperies has been a hand operation. This has been due in part to the wide variations of window sizes and because of the widely differing tastes that individuals have in drapes, both in terms of fabric and style.
While a large portion of the drapery industry is still in the custom hand-made business, a significant portion of the industry is now trying to standardize drapery production and many attempts to speed up the hand process have been suggested.
Almost all of the recent approaches have revolved around attachments for sewing machines or for attachments to the table on which the sewing machine was supported. One of the early devices is disclosed in the Gellman U.S. Pat. No. 2,669,955. This consisted of a stationary blade and two movable blades mounted on and adjacent the stationary blade. The operator would place the fabric over the stationary blade and thence downward into the recesses formed between the stationary blade and the movable blades. The operator would then move the movable blades toward the central stationary blade and thus retain the fabric within that area and then the fabric would be bent over the outside surfaces of the movable blades and the cloth would then be slid off of the device in the form of a folded triple pleat. This device was usually mounted somewhere adjacent the sewing machine and after the operator had formed the pleat, the operator would move the pleat to the sewing machine needle and secure the folded triple pleat.
Firestein et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,331,345 automated the Gellman-type apparatus by having the blades be hydraulically operated. After the operator had placed the material between two sets of blades, one stationary and one movable, she could then depress a switch and the movable blades would move toward the stationary pair to form a triple pleat. This speeded the operation up since the operator did not have to hand-fold the material around a series of blades since this was now being done by the hydraulically operated blades.
In addition to attempts to speed up the forming of the sections of the triple pleat, the operators faced an additional problem of accurately spacing the pleats along the length of the drapery panel. An attempt to solve this problem involved the placing of score marks or fold lines in the buckram or stiffening portion of the upper edge of the drapery panel. If the operator centered these score lines in her pleat forming attachment, the pleats formed therearound would be substantially equally spaced both along the top of the panel and from each of the two edges. Also, U.S. Pat. No. 3,712,520 used a strip of thermoplastic which was shaped and creased so as to be readily foldable into a form to be used in forming the header into uniformly spaced pleats. The creases are at preselected intervals, however, and cannot be easily varied from one spacing width to another.
Another solution to the problem of spacing pleats was made for use in the custom field and consisted of a set of manually operated lazy tongs which had weighted clamps. These devices were usually 10 to 15 feet in length and would serve to help the operator space the location of pleats so that they were relatively uniformly spaced along long lengths of drapery panels. The panel would be placed in the lazy tongs device which was at its fully open position, the operator would then close the device allowing loops to form between the weighted clamps. When the lazy tongs were drawn together, she would then by hand and by eye, adjust the height of the loops extending inbetween the clamps so that the material extending away from each of the end clamps was approximately equal. The operator would then hand staple the loops that were formed thereby and in this way aid the next operator who would form triple pleats. Following the hand-forming of pleats, the pleats would be sewn and the staples removed.
A recent example of another attempt at more fully automating the drapery-making process is Firestein et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,661,103. In this apparatus, after the buckram and the initial hem have been made in the cloth by hand or in some other device, the drapery panel is placed by hand in the machine so that one corner of the panel comes underneath and can be held by the sewing machine. Thereafter, the corner is sewn, following which a measuring device in the form of a rotatable bar is moved against the cloth and pulls the cloth down in an inclined supporting surface, with the sewn corner still being held by the sewing machine. A sufficient amount of the drapery panel is pulled so that there will be sufficient material for forming one triple pleat and to allow for spacing the first pleat from the corner that has just been sewn. Thereafter, one triple pleat is automatically formed. After the pleat is formed, it is transferred again to gripping means associated with the sewing machine and the sewing machine needle and the pleat is then sewn. While the sewn pleat is being retained by the gripping means associated with the sewing machine, the device for measuring out another length of fabric again operates and pulls another length of drapery material so that the next pleat can be formed. Again, the amount of fabric pulled will allow for spacing between this next and the previous pleat. This process then continues one pleat at a time until the desired number of pleats have been formed with the final operation being the sewing of the second corner of the panel.
This machine suffers from the problem that it is not a relatively fast operating piece of equipment, that the amount of fabric that is to be pulled must be hand-fed to the machine and aligned by the operator based on the length of fabric that is going to be formed into a drape. Applicants have found that drapery panels are not of a consistent width and thus the operator of this machine, if she were to correctly place each of the pleats on each succeeding panel, would need to make a separate adjustment for each panel going through the machine. Further, there is no precise control over the top edge of the panel nor of the amount of material pulled and the device deals only with one pleat at a time.
Other examples of attempts to more fully automate the pleat-forming operation and to solve the problem of correctly spacing the pleats one from the other equally along the length of the panel can be shown by Lawson, U.S. Pat. No. 3,822,034 and Ryan, U.S. Pat. No. 3,824,964.
Lawson shows a pleat forming device which slightly extends the capabilities of the earlier patents dealing with pleat spacing but has still not automated the process. The device uses a movable lazy tongs device, a plurality of pleat formers, a series of scales and a tacking device. The operator measures the panel's width and determines how many pleats are desired. The operator then sets some pointers, enters some information into an undescribed control system which apparently activates the lazy tong device. The panel is aligned with scale marks by the operator, the tongs activated and thereafter pleats are formed. Following pleat formation the pleats are stapled and the panel is removed for further processing elsewhere.
Ryan is very similar to Firestein et al 3,661,103 in that successive pleats are made in a panel and then sewn. The panel has had a header portion preformed thereon and the side hems have already been sewn.
The operator must pre-set the machine for the required pleat take-up and spacing after measuring the panel's width. Also, the operator must set the distance for the first and last pleats from the panel's corners. After loading one end of the panel the operator must guide the panel through the machine by keeping the top edge aligned with a guide fixed to the machine. Thereafter, the successively formed pleats are sewn.
Other patents known to applicant are as follows: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,667,667; 3,802,609; 3,823,452; 3,760,746; 3,767,091; 3,724,729; 2,915,997 and 2,988,027.
Nowhere in the prior art has there been a drapery-making machine which has worked with the entire width of a panel nor with a plurality of panels all at one time. Further, none work sufficiently fast so as to be competitively superior to a skilled operator who was making drapes by hand. Furthermore, the prior devices discussed herein suffer from the problem that there still need to be many operator functions and operate-made dial settings in order to prepare the machine to properly space pleats along the length of the panel. Only single pleats are being dealt with and the performance of the machines still depends on operators.